I'm not only keeping to my workout schedule which IS TOTES AWESOME BABAY!! But I also did Step Work's from Cathe's Cardio Hits dvd ~ an oldie but goodie ~ AND I DID the whole thang pretty much without pausing! Which is HUGE!! As I haven't done it in about 2 years! Yes, you heard me, 2 years! And it's pretty intense! I used to have to take it down a notch without fail during the step skips over the step when I was doing it before and now I don't. Way cool! This is ALL as a result of doing Cathe's Tabata and HIIT workouts. I've been doing them way more lately as I've been doing an experiment to see if they really open my lungs up cardio wise and because I've been coming home late from work and surprisingly enough the plyometrics in the Tabata and HIIT jiggle my condo way less ~ less agony for my neighbours, lol! ~ than step. One of the reasons is because I've learned to land very softly, bending my knees deeply and taking it into my quads and landing toe, ball, heel. Thank ballet for that! So as I said to a friend I land so quietly like a First Nation's walking in the forest ~ NO sound. Even the squirrels make more commotion than me! lol! With that said, the experiment is working! My cardio capacity really is getting better. WooHoo!!
Somebody said it this way on Cathe's forum: "I have always thought this (Step Works) was Cathe's hardest step
workout! I love it, but it's a killer! It's the one I always reach for when I want to check my fitness level and be sure I'm "up to par"!
... so practice, do some Tabata & HIIT, then test it with Step Works, and all is coming.
Tonight I did XTrain's Tabatacise! Woohoo! This is just my second time doing it. And already I see a teeny-tiny bit of improvement. I also squeezed in my Intensity dvd (warmup to combo 2) that was planned for Saturday but I just couldn't resist doing today. Call me eager but I LOVE intensity and plyometric type workouts. I just love jumping. I guess it's a throwback from ballet where I excelled in jumps. It's in my blood. I just hope my knees behave!
Cathe gives you five tabata's on this dvd. Of which she separates them into LEVELS. Each LEVEL tacks on another tabata. LEVEL 1 has only one tabata and by LEVEL 5 you're doing all five tabatas. And, yet the way tabata's were designed you really ONLY need to do ONE tabata to reap the benefits of epoc calarie burn for the next days and of course increased cardio capacity. But Cathe's a machine and wants you to be one too. Lol! So I did LEVEL 2 with tabatas 1 and 2 which including warmup and cooldown is 25 minutes. Each tabata is actually just 4 minutes long though Cathe does top each tabata off at the end with a short blast to finish it off. Kinda like a burn set for cardio. Each tabata has eight 20-second high intensity blasts followed by a 10-second recovery. If you want to get a burn in your lungs and legs this will do it! It will also fast-track your cardio capacity like nothing else. But who told me to do it the day after, yes, I said the day after a heavy leg workout. But hey, give me a break, I didn't feel any quad pain before or during so I thought DOMS would slip under the radar, just for me of course. Haha! I'm joking right?! My legs are suddenly in P.A.I.N, I mean A.G.O.N.Y. I don't even want to think about tomorrow! Seriously, I'm a little afeard!!
AND to top it all off as I said before, I got a little gungho, couldn't leave well enough alone and added Intensity step into the mix. Thanks be to Jesus, I only did the warmup to combo 2. But still! The tabata should have been more than enough. This step is all power moves, plyo's, and intensity blasts which is basically like a frikken full-on 20 minute non-stop blast, I kid you not. Which includes a crazy-ass step section followed by an HIIT step section, high impact floor HIIT, low impact floor HIIT and a bonus bootcamp section. The really nice thing about it is Cathe designed it purposely so you can do as little or as much as you want, and use it to tack on sections to the beginning or end of say your weight workout. It's very flexible. But as one reviewer said, there's no downtime on this dvd. You go from intense to maximum-intense-on-roids-over-n-over-again. Yowza! BUT it hurts SO good! I guess that will be my mantra tomorrow!
The dynamic trio! ... I'm so proud of myself as I just did 3 workouts in a row since I've been back at work starting this past Monday, with my awesome go to trainers. I decided to print out a workout schedule and try really hard to focus and stick to it. I find that planning, printing and having my schedule in front of me at my desk is really helping me with my motivation and focus. I was finding that in my heart I want to do it. The heart drive is there BUT my physical, psychological motivation was lagging behind once the evening came around. This way, seeing my planned schedule and also knowing my days off is really helping me so far. But the true test is time over tension and consistency. So we'll see!
My Bakasana Ideal (arms straight, knees higher)
My Bakasana Reality (arms bent, knees lower, but getting there!)
I'm going to try and keep this short and sweet. Just an overview as I need to get to bed!
Travis Monday:
On Monday I did my hearthrob, Travis', Ultimate Yogi Flexibility and snuck in a bakasana (arm balance) and jumpback to chatarunga. Weee! I felt stronger the second time around. Love the front splits in this one which he has you sit in forever! I'm practically groin down on one side. Yes! My hammies feel quite knackered the next day, but you know it's just stretchy growing pains — the Travis' leftover effect — pummelling my hammies to submissive openess. All's good.
Cathe Tuesday:
Then on Tuesday I did the awesome Cathe's XTrain All Out Low Impact HIIT. My achilles have been feeling a touch twingy lately from all that plyometric jumpy fun I've been having. Been icing diligently but thought what better time than this to try her dvd. Man, this got my heart rate up. It was funtastic.
She uses alot of low impact cardio moves that really hit the quads hard making it anaerobic too. Those quads burn!! There was floor work then step work and finally glide disc. I'm still having trouble with those discs. I can't quite keep my feet on them without them sliding off during the exercises. I'm trying to figure out what the magic trick is. But overall this was an amazingly fun, challenging, HIIT, quad quaking sweatfest without any impact that left my quads nice and sore the next day. I even felt the soreness in my vastus medialis muscle (the teardrop) muscle close to my knees. Nice! This is a muscle that's always been hard for me to engage properly yet is key to keeping my patellas stabilized. So, it's nice to know that all those vastus medialis leg extension machine exercises that I do at the gym is paying off.
Kino Wednesday:
And I topped it all off tonight with my favorite beautiful ashtangi yogini teacher, Kino's Primary dvd. Not that I don't have other fav yogi teacher's ~ we all know me and Travis ~ but sorry Travis I have some other loves too. lol!
With Kino's dvd, I love her pacing which is a bit quicker and her impressive non-stop dialogue of instructions. Some will love the chatter and some won't. I love it. It actually keeps me focused and in the zone. Also, if you really listen to what she's saying her directions are a phenomenal gold mine of tips, teaching and guidance into each posture. Literally a treasure chest of information. And I got to practice my jump backs and throughs. I will master you yet! Funny, the Travis set has helped give me more strength and stamina for the primary which is a nice bonus. I'm actually not surprised as I thought it might.
Hmmm, I don't think I was successful in keeping it short. Oh well!
So, it's been a good week so far and it's just past hump day! Now it's all down hill from here. Weeee!
... practice, schedule ~ do whatever works ~ and all is coming.
Yeah, that's right I tried, is the operative word, to do premix X49 on Cathe's new high intensity dvd X10 last Tuesday. Ya right who was I fooling! Delusion is the reason for optimism! ... This awsome dvd is actually 5 separate workouts that are only 10 minutes long, a misnomer as none of them are actually 10 minutes, more like 12 minutes to 17 minutes long, but when you add the warmup and cool down works out to around 25 to 30 minutes each. They were designed to be used as mini-blast-that-bootie-into-afterburn workouts that you can do when you're short on time or want to tack it on to a weight training or yoga day. Or you can use the premix section and do a number of the workouts all in one. All these ways are equally valid and this dvd was purposely designed for all these varied uses in mind. It includes 5 workouts: Step, Low Impact, Hi/Lo, Cardio Blast and Fat Burning Circuit.
So with that I thought I'd go all out and do the X49 premix. Now, I got to premise that the amazing Cathletes out there have been running forum threads that they did X77, the most powerful and cardio blasting of ALL 5 workouts strung together. Talk about ironman! Well, I have no inclination to go to nosebleed levels in the near or far future but I just thought why not try X49? It's just 3 sections, the step, low impact, cardio blast sections plus warmup and cool down. What can it hurt? Oh ya, it hurt! I could only get up to low impact and I was through. Done in! Caput! But come to think of it I only had one more section to go. So really not so bad, eh? So I'm still proud of myself and won't disturb my ego by comparing to the nosebleed Cathletes.
I initially thought the warm up would be boring as I don't particularly like floor cardio warmups, preferring step. But the music was so amazing that I forgot all about my funny preferences and really got into it. In fact, I got an earworm of the song in my dreams it was that good. Haha! Actually Cathe outdid herself in this dvd and really chose amazing music for all the workouts. Especially notable was the low impact section that played a revved up version of Aerosmith's Walk This Way. It was a blast and just pushes you to keep going. Speaking of keep going, I thought I was going to die with the step portion. I knew from previewing it I was going in deep and felt it was the hardest workout of the 5 and let me preface this by saying that all of them are hard. And I'm not the only one that feels that, the Cathletes do too. Ha! And the reason it is, is because she starts right off without a by or leave into fast feet shuffles into jump ropes into power 15's with NO breaks at all which she cycles over and over until she moves onto long hop turns etc. Holy nap Batman, when can I breathe! I had to do my forced breaks to breathe. lol! But I made it through and soldiered onto the metabolic section after the step and then onto the low impact segment where I called it a day. And proceeded to have a nap later on. That workout deserved a nap, darn it!
